


wherever we find them

by cosmicocean



Series: the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: But you will pry her marriage to Luke from my cold dead hands, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Fucking Skywalkers Man, Gen, Han Solo Lives, Han and Leia kind of accidentally become parents, Mara is mentioned only briefly, Rey Skywalker, Rey-Centric, To an optimistic but tired future Jedi, in which Rey discovers she has a family and they all try to figure out what to do with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 14:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6082656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicocean/pseuds/cosmicocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"we must take care of our families wherever we find them."</p><p>Han survives his son's murder attempt. Leia survives her son almost killing Han. Rey survives discovering her family and that perhaps she's someone after all.</p><p>Or, my self-indulgent "han's alive and also Rey is a Skywalker" story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wherever we find them

When Han is wheeled down on a stretcher with Chewie by his side after confronting Kylo Ren (who is his son) and after making sure Finn is taken to get care (because he’s hurt so bad) and when Rey can still feel the weight of the lightsaber in her belt tingling through her palms (because this is her, this is her, this is her), a woman is standing with her hair done up, looking anxiously at him. The stretcher pauses briefly in front of her. Rey can see Han’s eyes flutter and his lips twitch into something approaching a smirk. The woman shakes her head and presses her lips to his forehead, and Rey knows who she is.

When General Organa hugs her, it is like all her muscles relax. She can’t remember the last time she was hugged like this. She nearly cries.

 

Rey turns the lightsaber over and over in her hands. She’s been alternating between waiting at Finn’s bedside and Han’s. Right now she’s at the latter’s, the chair somehow managing to be too soft and too hard at the same time. Her eyes feel slightly heavy- she can’t remember the last time she slept any longer than three or four hours.

“You can’t go without sleeping for so long, Rey.”

She looks up to see General Organa _Leia she asked her to call her Leia_ pulling up a chair and sitting across her on Han’s right.

“I used to go full days without sleeping back on Jakku. I know how to handle it.” 

Leia nods slowly and Rey watches her, studies her closely like she is back in the remnants of old ships a lifetime ago and she is trying to finding the most valuable parts.

“You know who my family is, don’t you?” she asks. Surprise flickers across Leia’s face momentarily, to be replaced with careful confusion.

“I’m sorry?”

“You do.” She can feel the certainty thrumming through her. “You know who I am.”

Leia’s lips purse slightly.

“I’m Luke’s daughter, aren’t I?” she presses on. “That’s why I saw what I saw when I took the lightsaber. That’s why the Force is so strong in me. I’m your brother’s child.”

Leia doesn’t say anything for a long time. They gaze at each other, Rey’s jaw tight. She won’t back down, not for anyth-

There’s a groan from between them both. They start and look down.

“Hell, Leia,” Han mumbles through cracked lips. “Just tell th’ girl. Just ’s stubborn as her father. _And_ her aunt.”

Rey knows she should feel shock at her suspicions being confirmed, but she stares down at Han, eyes barely creaked open but still seeing, she can’t feel anything but joy.

Leia gazes down at Han, lips parted slightly in shock, before she smiles slowly and shakes her head.

“You still drive me crazy,” she whispers, locking their fingers together. His lips twitch slightly into a grin.

“Good,” he mumbles. “That way you’ll keep me around. You need a crazy person sometimes.”

“I happen to like nice men.”

Rey leaves them as Leia kisses her and Han’s intertwined fingers, leaving them to their quiet reunion.

 

Rey is woken from Finn’s bedside by an aide, who says that “Mr. Solo” wants to see her. She wonders if Han ever had a rank here, if he refuses to go by it. He seems like a man who would be unsettled by ranks.

When she heads into his hospital room, he seems almost asleep at first. She takes the chair by him, still warm she guesses from where Leia was only moments before. She sits and waits. She spent years in the wastes of Jakku waiting for family she knew would never come. She can be patient.

“Told you,” he says finally, voice less scratchy and grated than yesterday, stronger and healthier. “Stubborn.”

Rey can’t muster the energy for a grin, but she can manage a tired smile. “Evidently it runs in the family.”

Han turns his head towards hers finally, eyes open. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know.”

Rey shifts. “Why did Papa and Mama leave me?” Because now there’s two figures in her mind. There’s mythical Luke Skywalker, of great power and legend. But then there’s Papa, who wrapped a bandage around her leg when she got into a fight with a little boy who said that girls were stupid, who kissed her forehead, who tugged on her hair teasingly and laughed as she whined “ _Pa_ pa” in response. She can’t put them together.

Han sighs. “Luke disappeared for five years after Ben… well. After we lost Ben. It wasn’t _exactly_ disappearing. We’d get messages every once in a while. We thought he was working on a way to bring Ben back. He came back briefly to Leia and I, told us he was leaving for good. And then this little girl poked her head from behind his legs.”

Rey’s stomach swoops.

“We took care of you for the day. Treated you like royalty. That night when you went to bed, he said he was leaving you in the Western Reaches. We couldn’t worm where out of him.”

Rey swallows. “Why?”

“He said the First Order was getting stronger. Said there was nothing he could do and this was the best way to protect you. He and Leia got into it, really lost their minds at each other. They screamed their throats raw before Luke left. Carried you out while you were sleeping. That was the last we saw of him.” 

“He didn’t leave you with any more information?”

Han smiles. It’s old and weary, but there’s something nostalgic there, nostalgic and a little fond. “Kid’s got a penchant for the dramatic.” 

“And you just let him?”

Han sighs heavily, smile gone. “We thought he’d just gone to blow off steam. By the time we realized he was going, the ship’s engines had already started.”

“Was that when you left?”

“Yeah.”

Rey looks at him for a moment. She’s been thinking about this since he woke up yesterday.

“I remember you.”

His head, lowered and turned away in sadness, snaps up. “You do?”

“It’s blurry. But you and Chewie were Uncle. Leia was Auntie. You were…” she struggles to put it into words, what these shadowy figures from long ago meant, with faces she cannot truly see, only impressions. “You were something good to think about when I was stuck on Jakku.”

Han’s lips twitch into a small smile and he gives a short nod. Rey knows he doesn’t like emotion, doesn’t know how to talk about the warmth these memories gave her, so she moves on to what he _can_ help her with: facts.

“What about my mother?”

Han clears his throat. “I never met her. Luke said her name was Mara and he’d met her while he was traveling the galaxy.”

“Oh.” _Mara and Luke Skywalker._ Her parents had names.

Han’s watching her appraisingly. “Heard you been waiting for me and Finn to wake up.”

“Yeah.”

“Heard you haven’t slept much, either.” 

Rey sets her jaw stubbornly. “Maybe.” 

Han snorts. “You gotta get some rest, kid.”

“I’m-“

“Leia and I are voting you be the one to go find Luke,” Han interrupts. “Makes sense for you to do it. Doesn’t if you’re not healthy enough.”

She hesitates.

“He lied directly to my face and Leia’s face about knowing how to work Starkiller Base just so he could get to you,” he tells her bluntly, though his face has softened slightly. “He cares more about you than pretty much anything. And he’d be mad as all hell if he knew you were killing yourself over his bedside.”

Rey hadn’t known he’d lied.

She takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

“All right then.” Han looks vaguely uncomfortable, like he doesn’t know how to end the conversation, so Rey gives him an out.

“I’ll let you get your rest, old man.”

His eyes narrow. “Try calling me old again.”

Rey’s smile has a little more of a spark in it this time. “Try getting up to stop me.”

Han glares, but his lips have the slightest upwards curve.

 

Rey’s room is about the size of her home on Jakku. There are four walls and no draft from the Jakku night winds and people will knock on a door before coming in.

She doesn’t know if she likes it.

BB-8 wheels in when she’s sitting on her bed uncomfortably, looking around trepidatiously. BB-8 had stayed behind on Poe’s latest mission and had been keeping her company.

“Hi, BB-8.”

They beep inquisitively at her.

“I. Well.” She looks around the room. “I don’t have anything of mine.”

BB-8 tilts their head at her. Then a little drawer in his body opens. Rey stares.

Sitting in it is her little X-Wing pilot doll.

They beep and whistle.

“I’m glad you had a feeling before we left,” she whispers. She kneels down and gently lifts the doll out. She’s had this doll as long as she could remember. She’d talked to it when she was a little girl and had no one else. She tucks it into her belt and feels a little more sure of herself.

When she heads into Han’s room for her daily visit, his eyes widen at the sight of it. Chewbacca looks up and huffs out a surprised sound.

“Where’d you get that?” Han asks. She looks down.

“It was mine when I was a little girl. BB-8 took it with them before we left Jakku.” She tugs it out of her belt and holds it up so he can see it better. “Did I have it when I came?”

Han gives her a lopsided grin. “I made it for you, kid.”

“I helped,” Chewbacca growls.

“Chewie helped,” Han amends.

Rey looks at him, then down to the doll. In the very back of her mind, she can see steady hands winding twine around orange fabric. A distant rumble rolls through her memory and then a “yeah, yeah, I’m doing it just tight enough, I know what I’m doing, all right?” The voice is younger, but unmistakable.

“I remember,” she says softly. She looks back up at them. “It kept me company.”

“It’s based off what your dad wore, when he went after the Death Star.”

“I called it Red 5. He was my little brother, sometimes. Did you name it?”

“Chewie.”

Chewie nods proudly.

She smiles, trying to keep it from trembling and failing. “Thank you. It kept me company.”

 

Rey’s getting more and more memories. She’ll dream of a woman with shining red hair and a laugh that warms her to her core, of a man with a light beard teaching her to understand Droid and rewarding her with the tiniest bag of candy when she manages to understand every word on their learning recording. She sees the world from atop Chewbacca’s shoulders, giggling at her newfound height.

She sees so much, but with it comes pain. There’s always a low level buzz of ache in the back of her head, and at least once a day she will be struck with blinding agony in her head, so bad she will have to excuse herself from any given activity and hide in her room until it goes away.

One day, when she is curled up in bed under blankets, white knuckling the pillow over her head, she sees through the crack in her vision between bed and pillow Leia, holding a mug of something with a straw in it.

“You’re getting the headaches, aren’t you?” Rey’s face must give some kind of affirmative because Leia nods. “I got them when I started training, and Luke told me he got them when he started training, too. You’re becoming more open to the Force. It can put your body through the ringer.” She sits on the bed next to Rey and Rey slowly moves out from under the pillow, back leaning against the wall. She tucks her legs under her and accepts the mug from Leia. “Drink this. It tastes vile, but it’ll help.”

“It’s not addictive, is it?” Rey remembers as a little girl seeing junkies in Niima Outpost, eyes fractured from years of deathsticks and who knows what else.

“No. It’s perfectly safe. No side effects from coming off it. It just helps your body adjust.”

Rey takes a sip and screws up her face. “Kriff.”

Leia smiles. “Told you.”

She takes another tentative sip. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She can already feel the warmth of it in her chest. “Leia?”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you want to tell me who my father is?”

Leia sighs. “Luke did what he did to protect you. And no matter how upset I may be with him, I don’t have the right to interfere in the way he’s trying to take care of you. No matter how much I disagree with him.”

Rey wonders what it would be like, if someone she loved fell to the Dark Side, and the two other people closest to her vanished because of it. She wonders how tired she would be, and how furious,

“I’m sorry,” she tells her. Leia looks up from Rey’s bedsheets in surprise. “I’m sorry I didn’t try and talk to him.”

“It’s not your fault, Rey. I don’t know who’s fault any of it is, but it’s certainly not yours.”

Rey fidgets with the mug handle. “All the stories of the Jedi say that you’re supposed to feel peace with the people who have wronged you. That’s the way to the Light Side of the Force. But I can’t. I’m so angry. I’m angry with my father, and I’m angry with your son, and I’m angry at the whole damn universe.”

Leia’s quiet for a moment. “Luke and I learned some stories of the Jedi before our father fell to the Dark Side,” she says thoughtfully. “They tried to suppress their anger, their love. Luke realized that suppressing love was impossible. It was his love for his family that kept him on the side of the light. But he and I differed on anger. He tried to eradicate his anger. I don’t believe in that. Do you know what happened to me during the Rebellion? To my planet?”

Rey nods. 

“I was so angry. I was miserable and filled with grief and just furious. But I didn’t let it consume me. I allowed it to be part of me. But I did not let it be me. You can’t suppress your emotions. That doesn’t make you peaceful. Letting them be a piece of you, letting them be natural, _that_ helps find a way to peace.” She puts her hand over Rey’s. “You can be angry, Rey. Just don’t drown in it.”

Rey swallows and nods.

She and Leia are quiet for a little while, Leia’s presence a warm comfort that fills Rey with a nostalgia she didn’t even know she had. Then Leia’s eyebrow rises and her eyes twinkle and the almost motherly feeling passes to something like camaraderie, something like what Rey always imagined having an aunt or a sister would feel to be.

“You’re pretty good with a blaster,” she says. “Want to get better?”

Leia spends the rest of the day shooting with Rey. She keeps drinking the beverage. The headaches fade over the course of the week.

 

It’s been two and a half weeks and Finn hasn’t woken up.

Rey tells him all her stories. She tells them about the family she’s discovering and the abilities she’s finding and the memories emerging. 

Poe stops in sometimes. Rey likes Poe. Rey’s become a good judge of people over the years. She’s had to. People at Niima Outpost were always rough around the edges. If people were too bad, she had to know, so she could avoid them. Poe radiates honesty and goodness. He is genuine, something she has so rarely encountered but is finding more and more.

When she comes at the two and a half week mark, Poe is sitting in the chair that they share. It took a while to organize a system for the chair. Rey would always try to give it to Poe and vice versa. Now whoever was there first gets the chair first and the other will sit on the floor next to them.

“You look tired,” she says, crossing her legs on the floor. 

“Had to do a run to make final sure Skywalker’s map is legit,” he answers, head lolling slightly.

“Oh.” She traces a pattern on the floor with her finger. “They want me to go after him, you know.”

“Mmm, everyone thinks you’re the Chosen One or something.”

Rey frowns. “I don’t like that.” She hesitates. “You don’t think I’m the Chosen One, do you?”

Poe looks down at her. He’s quiet for a moment and she wonders if he can see it, the pressure bearing down on her at the whispers that follow her around the base, _Skywalker, Chosen One, the next Jedi_.

He cracks a smile suddenly. 

“Nah,” he answers carelessly. “You’re a pilot. Way cooler.”

She grins back in relief. “Better than you.”

“Not possible.”

 

Rey spends a lot of time in the hangers. She sits there quietly in the early mornings, polishing and cleaning parts for the ships that are left out. 

“The ball droid said that you’d be here.”

Rey looks up. Han’s limping in, a messenger bag awkwardly hanging from his shoulder. BB-8 is whirring in with him alongside R2-D2. Rey likes R2. He swears often but fondly at C-3PO, and seems to have taken on watching BB-8 to make sure they stay out of trouble almost as though it was programmed into him.

BB-8 whirs irritably.

“I _know_ you have a name.” Han tugs up a seat and sits across from Rey where her grease-stained hands are scrubbing at a compression capacitor. 

Rey frowns at him. “Should you be moving right now?” She’s honestly surprised that Leia doesn’t have a tracker on him. A frequent site around the base has been Han hobbling around giving the other pilots advice or bickering with Poe about the proper way to do a roll until he stops dead at the sight of Leia’s icy glare, turns around, and hobbles right on back for bed rest.

“I’m injured, not dead.” Han peers at the capacitor. “You’re pretty good at scrubbing these things off.”

“It’s nowhere near as hard as it was on Jakku. I had to worry about sand then, this is just grease.”

Han’s brow crinkles. “Why did you do it on Jakku?”

Rey shrugs. “Work was work.”

“When did you start working?”

She looks down at her work. “Not long after Papa and Mama- when I came to Jakku. I needed to survive. Scavenging was the best way to do it.”

“You didn’t have anyone to look after you?”

“No. Just me.”

Han’s quiet for a moment.

“Kid,” he says finally, voice soft in a way she hasn’t heard yet. “I gotta tell you, I could strangle Luke for what he’s done to you. Leia and I both.”

Rey looks up at Han in surprise. His face is gentle and sad.

She swallows. “What’s happened has happened.”

“You’re not mad?”

“I.” Rey puts down the capacitor. “I was. And I am. But it’s not. I could have.” She doesn’t know how to put it, how to tell him that she looks at the easy way he banters with Chewbacca and the dry humor in Leia’s eyes and how _kind_ they all are, and she sees everything she could have had. “I could have had this life and I don’t,” she manages. “And I don't know how to.”

Han quietly moves the small overturned bucket Rey’s been using as a table and wraps his arms around her. Rey clutches at his jacket and buries her face in his shoulder, shaking and crying for the first time in so long.

“Look, maybe you didn’t have this life before.” Han pulls away and wipes her tears off her cheeks with the sleeve of his jacket. “And I’d give all the planets in the galaxy to fix that. But you’ve got us now. And you can’t get rid of it, not even if you tried.”

Rey hiccups and nods. Han clears his throat.

“So, uh, I had a good reason for coming here.” He reaches into the messenger bag and hands her the lightsaber. “Didn’t seem like a good idea, you stewing by yourself in here.”

Rey turns the lightsaber to the side in confusion. “So you brought the lightsaber to keep me company?”

He gives her an exasperated look. “No.” He pulls something else out of his bag, a small training droids like ones she’s seen on Jakku. She vaguely remembers seeing it on the Falcon. “Right after I met your dad, he used this on board to practice with the lightsaber. I thought maybe you’d like to give it a shot. I remember some of the crazy crap that the old man was saying, so I thought I could talk you through it a little.”

A flame blossoms warm in Rey’s chest. “I’d like that.”

“Good.” He motions at her. “Stand up. I’m going to stay sitting. I was stabbed recently, you know.”

“Oh, really?” She rises. “What old man?”

“Hell, you’ve got a lot to hear about.”

When Chewbacca and Leia find them, the sun is higher in the sky, and Rey is rubbing a sore burn on her arm from the droid while Han laughs.

 

Rey’s got her knees drawn to her chest outside, by one of the rivers on D’Qar. Tomorrow she leaves and she’s _terrified._

She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want _any_ of this. She doesn’t want the look on everyone’s faces when they hear she’s going to find Luke Skywalker. She doesn’t want the awe she sees in them, the almost reverence. She just wants to be Rey. She just wants to be a pilot.

She wants to find her father and she wants to run away all at once. 

She doesn’t look up when Leia sits down next to her. 

“Han was worried about where you’d gotten to,” she says. “He likes to pretend he doesn’t worry so he can lay some sort of claim to being tough, but he does.”

Rey hunches a little further. “I’m here.”

“I noticed.” Leia leans back a little to look out at the flowing water. “Do you know why I made them stop calling me princess?”

“No.”

“I let them for a long time. It felt like a connection to what I’d lost. But then they said princess like they meant queen, and then they said queen like they meant legend, and then they said legend like they meant goddess.” She shakes her head. “I was never cut out to be a goddess. Nobody is. We’re all just cut out to be people.” She looks at Rey. “I know what it’s like to be spoken of as someone higher than air. It’s dizzying and it’s terrifying. I can’t make it go away. But I can tell you as someone who knows that if you grit your teeth and keep your head high, it gets a little easier.” She stands up and holds out her hand. “I know it’s not the greatest comfort I can give. Han was always much better at comforting B- at this sort of thing.”

Rey hesitates, then takes the hand. She leans her head into Leia’s shoulder. “Thank you, Auntie,” she mumbles. Leia stiffens, then wraps an arm around her shoulder.

“Come on, let’s go back to your uncle before he launches a rescue mission.”

 

She promises Finn that she will return, and Poe promises her that he will look after Finn, and BB-8 promises to look after the both of them.

“Don’t lose her, all right?” Han instructs to Chewbacca. Han and Leia had bickered a long time about whether or not he was going to go with them, but Rey had insisted that he stay on D’Qar until he healed. 

“Are you talking about me or the ship?” Rey asks as she approaches.

“The ship, of course. You’re only getting lost if you want to.”

Rey grins. “Good.”

Han shuffles awkwardly for a moment before he pulls her into a hug. 

“Take care of yourself, kid,” he mutters. “Try not to punch your dad in the face from me.”

“Thanks, uncle.”

Han pulls away and pats her on the back. “Knock ‘em dead.”

Leia doesn’t hug her, but she lays a gentle hand on her back and it says everything she needs it to say and Rey understands it perfectly. They don’t speak until Rey is almost to the Falcon, when Leia calls out to her.

“May the Force be with you,” she says, a gentle smile playing on her lips. Rey smiles back and nods. Then she turns away from the closest thing she has left to parents and walks up the ramp of the Falcon.

 

The walk is long, but somehow makes everything feel simpler, and when she gets to the top of the hill, she is no longer afraid.

The man in the robe turns around, and she knows him, but she doesn’t know him, and she will know him, and perhaps she will never know him.

Rey holds out the lightsaber to her father.

Her grip is firm.

Her hand does not waver.

She is ready.

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually the first Star Wars fic I started, I just never quite knew what to do with it. I'm rattling the idea of a sequel around in my head between Rey and Luke. Part of me wants to wait until Episode VIII so I can springboard off that. Part of me just wants to go ahead and do it.


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